For Good (26 page)

Marydale stood in her mother's kitchen, which was no longer her mother's or hers although the shelves and the baseboards were as familiar as her own skin; a coat of paint couldn't change that. Henry and Annette watched her, looking hopeful.

“You belong here,” Annette said.

“It'll be fun,” Sierra chimed in. “We're going to cook out, and Henry and Annette have invited some people from Tristess who want to meet you.”

“A lot of people are mad at Ronald Holten,” Henry added. “This is a win for all of them, for all of Tristess. They want to thank you.”

“It'll be potluck,” Annette said. “Just a little get-together. People who care 'bout you.”

Marydale felt good old-fashioned courtesy pulling on her, like a familiar song she couldn't hear without humming along. She was supposed to say,
Well, gosh, I don't deserve all that, but if everyone's gone to all that trouble, and of course I'd love to see folks again. It's been too long.
Then someone would ask,
How many times did you win that rodeo competition?
She knew the script, and she knew her role, and she said, “No!” The word flew out of her mouth before she realized what she was going to say.

Kristen put a hand on Marydale's shoulder.

Marydale turned to her. “Do you mind if we leave today?” she asked.

Kristen's expression said,
Did I ever want to be here?
To the gathering in the kitchen, she said, “If Marydale and I leave now, we can make it back to Portland by midnight.”

Annette and Henry protested, but Kristen held up her hand, polite but final. Marydale hid her smile until they were outside. The sky had cleared, and behind the house, the Firesteed Mountains rose up and up, their outline crisp against the blue. There was a faint hint of green between the last patches of snow. She hadn't seen it from the prison yard. And it felt like a great luxury to leave all that beauty behind.

“Mind if I drive?” Marydale asked.

Kristen beamed. “Go for it.”

Marydale pushed Kristen's seat back, adjusted the mirrors, and tuned to the local radio station. On the way out of town they stopped at the Arco for coffee. Kristen poured herself a twenty-ounce cup, tasted it, and said, “Ah! This stuff is awful.” Then she wrapped an arm around Marydale's waist and added, “I can't wait to be back in Portland with you.”

Marydale leaned down and kissed her with a quick, loud smack. The woman behind the counter glared. Marydale tossed her hair over her shoulder. She was still wearing the suit Kristen had brought to the prison. Kristen hadn't guessed her size quite right, and the pants hung off her hips, while the cuffs revealed inches of wrist, but it didn't matter. She felt like she was wearing her full rodeo regalia with Trumpet's reins in her hands.

“Did you see that woman in there?” Kristen said as they exited the mini-mart, bags of snacks hanging off their arms and coffees in hand. “She looked like she'd swallowed tack. I mean really…two women. Is it still that shocking?”

Marydale stopped. The attendant was watching them through the window. She caught her eye, then kissed Kristen again, their bags tangling and their coffees sloshing.

“Shocking!” Marydale said.

Then, like a gleeful child, she broke into a run. To her surprise, Kristen followed, her suit jacket flapping.

“Let's get out of here,” Kristen said.

Marydale revved the engine of Kristen's Audi the way Aldean had taught her to rev her first Dodge pickup, and they sped out of the parking lot and onto the wide-open highway. The radio blared a triumphant country anthem about a pretty woman and a tailgate party. Marydale sang along, and Kristen laughed.

“I've never heard this song in my life.”

“That song
was
my life,” Marydale said.

When the radio died away in the high desert between Tristess and Burnville, Marydale and Kristen clasped their hands over the gearshift and talked. Their talk veered from Ronald Holten to Gulu to Nyssa and Eric Neiben and, in between the serious truths, their laughter came easily, like groundwater running just beneath the surface. Kristen told her about Grady carefully picking the pine nuts off his steak at the Heavenly Harvest. They imagined the HumAnarchists in Tristess, trying to get the old ranchers to draw mandalas. Although the drive was long, Marydale felt as though she would never get tired. And she marked each county line in her heart.

When they finally arrived in Portland, Marydale threw herself on the bed in Kristen's spacious bedroom, letting the city lights wash over her.

“We're home!” she said.

“Does it feel like home?” Kristen asked.

“You feel like home,” Marydale said.

Kristen set her glasses on the bedside table and fell into Marydale's open arms. Their first kiss was slow and gentle, as they explored each other's bodies carefully like new lovers.

Kristen lifted Marydale's shirt over her head and unclasped her bra. And Marydale had the feeling that she was something Kristen had worked hard to achieve and was now enjoying fully. She was part of Kristen's life—not a strange exception, not a secret. They were friends and lovers and equals. And she could give herself to Kristen completely because her body was hers to give. Her blood, her bones, her sex, her dreams: they were hers, and she was free.

Then they were casting off blankets and swimming in the sea of pillows. Kristen spoke endearments and compliments, her voice growing rougher as their movements grew more hurried. Marydale gave herself entirely to Kristen's touch. The slight tension that had always stayed in her neck, the sense that she should hold back or finish faster, was gone. She opened her legs for Kristen's fingers. Kristen found the perfect blend of pressure and movement. Then, a moment later, Kristen's lips and tongue were swirling across Marydale's body. Marydale heard herself whispering a joyous litany of cries.

“Yes. Harder. Please.”

She closed her eyes. Looking inward, she could see the constellation of nerves in her own body as Kristen filled her with her fingers and swept her tongue back and forth across Marydale's clit, bringing her closer and closer until her body turned to liquid gold, and she was the sunrise spilling over the Firesteed Summit, and she was the spring rains washing the city clean, and she was the first taste of a fine whiskey, and she was loved.

As soon as the last spasm of orgasm flickered out, she touched Kristen's back, urging her to roll over. Marydale guided her to the foot of the bed, so Kristen's knees bent over the edge. Then she knelt in the pile of blankets on the floor.

“I missed you,” Marydale whispered as she sank her tongue into the warm salt of Kristen's body.

When Kristen's body was so taut Marydale could not feel her breathing, she took Kristen's hand and guided it to the place where she kissed, running her tongue over Kristen's clit and Kristen's fingers in beautiful collaboration. Kristen cried out when she came, and in her pleasure Marydale heard their whole story. The cautious girl Marydale had kissed on her porch swing. Their first lovemaking. Their loneliness. The snow on the Deerfield Hotel. The distillery. Aldean's quick diagnosis:
You love her in your blood.
Kristen's tears on the Summit and her pride.
We won.

Kristen could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Portland's first annual Rose City Rodeo was the strangest incarnation of the rodeo ever, but a preponderance of the evidence pointed in that direction. She stood in the shade of the Sadfire Distillery, enjoying the summer spectacle.

At Marydale's urging, the rodeo featured only those events that had been certified cruelty-free by all major animal rights organizations and certified
animal fun
by Sierra's spinoff nonprofit the HumAnimal Collective. This, along with the constraints of space—the rodeo was hosted in the small industrial park that housed the distillery—left the rodeo without the traditional calf roping and bronco riding.

The PDX Bike Co-op subbed in with a variety of bike-like contraptions. As Kristen watched, a man in a top hat cycled by on a bicycle ten or twelve feet tall. Pugs in the Park had agreed to host a pug meet-up in lieu of the usual small-livestock competitions. Kristen stood in the fenced-in space, awash with brachycephalic dogs, to which Meatball happily added his number. Some of the dogs were in costume, and the rodeo queen—a very pretty boy named Duchess—was handing out organic dog biscuits and blue ribbons to all the contenders. Across the way, two women had brought alpacas and were doing a weaving demonstration while the source of the wool wandered over to the popcorn stand to graze.

Despite Sierra's avowal that Fishbowl Pocket Moon never played small shows, they were, in fact, a trio of not-so-starving real estate brokers who would play any weekend venue that invited them. They were setting up near the Sadfire tasting booth where Aldean and Marydale were already pouring samples of their latest release, the Rodeo Queen Revival. Behind the tasting booth a twenty-foot banner bore the Sadfire logo, the motto slightly modified. At Marydale's request, she and Aldean had changed the order of the words so it now read
DOLERE. SPERO. AMANT.
Grieve. Hope. Love. Kristen was so entranced by the rodeo and by watching Marydale pouring whiskey that she didn't notice Donna striding over.

“Can you explain any of this to me?” Donna asked, staying safely on the non-puggy side of the plastic fence.

Kristen couldn't stop smiling. “No,” she said. “None of it.”

Marydale lit a torch, its whiskey-soaked flames flickering in the late-afternoon sunshine. She held it up to the gathered crowd, then lowered it into her mouth until it disappeared.

“Has she thought about my offer?” Donna asked. “We start with Tristess County. Wrongful imprisonment. Nepotism. Then we go after Ronald Holten in civil court. He's broke, but he's got a lot of assets. Where Marydale came from, there are bound to be more lawsuits. It'll open a whole new division for Falcon Law.”

Marydale's voice drifted over the crowd. “Now, here you're going to taste some things you don't expect. There is a sweetness to the Rodeo Queen Revival that should come as a surprise and yet
not
a surprise. It's the sun rising over familiar terrain, a girl's first glimpse of her own beauty. It's a woman looking back. It's love, both ethereal and carnal, and yes, you can taste the salt of a woman's body in that sweetness.”

“I'll remind her that you asked,” Kristen said.

“Convince her!” Donna said. “This is the Powerball jackpot of civil rights lawsuits. Why wouldn't she say yes?”

Kristen watched Marydale raise her glass to the flame. “I think she feels like she's already won.”

“And you?” Donna asked. “When are you going to come back to the Falcon Law Group? We're going to sue Tri-State Global for price fixing. It'll be great. You could be front and center on that one. You can't just hide away doing small claims and I don't know…What are you doing?”

Kristen thought of her private practice with the window looking onto the tree-lined street and a bed for Meatball in the corner. Most days, Kristen drove up to Sadfire for lunch. As soon as the weather had cleared, she and Marydale had taken to eating sandwiches on the deck of the
Tristess
. They were always off work by five, and the city spread itself out for them like a banquet of concerts and the food fairs and the strange festivals to which the Rose City Rodeo added its number.

She didn't remind Donna that a quarter of the Falcon Law Group's clients had followed her to her new practice, as was their legal right.

“A lot of small-business stuff,” Kristen said casually. “A little defense work. A few parole cases. Tri-State Global says they might be getting sued. We've been talking. I haven't taken a retainer yet. I'm being selective.”

“Damn you,” Donna said with grudging admiration. “But you should be selective with us.”

From behind the bar, Marydale caught sight of Kristen, tipped her white Stetson, then blew her a kiss.

“Thanks,” Kristen said. “But I've got everything I want right here.”

It was late June, the kind of warm summer evening when hopeless romantics make bad choices about beautiful women. The twilight was all watery, yellow-blue brightness, and Portland glowed with the promise of warm pavement and cool moonlight. It was, as it turned out, a dangerous mix for Tate Grafton, who stood at the till of Out in Portland Coffee trying to make out what her boss had done to the change drawer.

“How is it possible,” she called without looking up, “that you are eight dollars over, but it's all in nickels?”

Just then, the wind chime on the door tinkled. It was because of that evening light that came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time and filled the city with a sense of possibility that Tate did not say, “Sorry, we're closed.”

The woman who had just walked in wore her hair pulled back in a low ponytail and had the kind of sleek magazine blondness that Tate was required, as a feminist, to say she did not like. And she did not like it in magazines. But in real life, and in the dangerous twilight that filtered through the front window, the woman was very pretty. She did not carry anything. No laptop. No purse. Not even a wallet and cell phone clutched in one hand. Nor did she have room in the pockets of her tight jeans for more than a credit card. Tate noticed.

The woman stood in the doorway surveying the coffee shop, from the exposed pipes, to the performance space, to the mural of Gertrude Stein. Right down to the cracked linoleum floor. Then she strode up to the counter and asked for a skinny, tall latte with Sweet'N Low.

“I'll, um…” Tate ran her hand through her hair, as if to push it off her face, although the clippers had already done that for her. “I'll have to warm up the machines. It'll be a minute.”

“I'll just take what's in the airpot,” the woman said, still surveying the shop.

Tate filled a paper cup and squeezed a biodegradable corn-plastic lid on it. The woman drew a bill from the pocket of her crisp, white shirt. Tate shook her head.

“On the house. It's probably stale.”

She was about to go back to counting the till when the woman asked, “How long has this been a coffee shop?”

Tate considered. “It opened as a bookstore in 1979. Then it closed for a few years in the early eighties, opened back up as a coffee shop in 1988, and it's been running since then. I think. I've been here for nine years.”

Too long
.

“‘Out in Portland Coffee.'” The woman read the side of her cup.

“Out Coffee,” Tate said. “That's what everyone calls it.”

“Any other businesses in the area?”

“There's Ron's Reptiles, the AM/PM, the Oregon Adult Theater.”

Across the street, the theater's yellow letter board advertised
HD FILM! STRIPPER SPANK-A-THON WEDNESDAYS!

From the back room, Maggie, the boss, called out, “They're all perverts.”

The woman nodded and turned as if to leave. Then she seemed to reconsider.

“Are there any women's bars in the area?” She glanced around the shop again, her eyes sliding past Tate's, resting everywhere but in Tate's direction.

“There's the Mirage.” Tate gave her directions.

“Is it safe to walk?”

“As safe as anywhere in the city.”

As soon as the woman left, twenty-year-old Krystal—Maggie's surrogate daughter or pet project, depending on who you asked—popped out of the back room, where she had ostensibly been studying.

“I heard that,” she said. “As safe as anywhere in the city.” She hopped up onto the counter next to Tate.

“Get off the counter.” Tate ruffled Krystal's short, pink hair.

“Is my butt a health code violation?”

“Yes.”

“Well, anyway,” Krystal said, swinging her legs and kicking the cupboard behind her, “I heard that. She practically asked you to walk her.
Is it safe?
” Krystal imitated a woman's soprano with an added whine. “
Hold me in your big, strong arms, you sexy butch.
”

“Ugh.” Tate rolled her eyes. “Why is she still here?” she called to Maggie in the back room.

“She's part of our family, Tate!”

Kindhearted Maggie; something had happened in utero, and she had been born without the ability to understand sarcasm.

“Some family,” Tate said, winking at Krystal and pulling her into a hug.

“Did you like her?” Krystal asked, pulling away from Tate.

“Who?”

“The woman who was just here.”

“No.” Tate turned back to the cash register and rolled a stack of nickels into a paper sleeve.

“Why didn't you go after her, like in the movies? She probably thought you were cute.”

Like in the movies.
That was always Krystal's question: Why isn't it like the movies?

“I'm
working
,” Tate said with feigned annoyance. “She just wanted a coffee. Anyway, I just got dumped, remember?”

“So?”

In the quiet minutes between customers, Tate had been reading
The Sociology of Lesbian Sexual Experience.
Now Krystal pulled the book from behind the counter and flipped it open.

“‘The Alpha Butch,'” she read. “‘In this paradigm'”—she pronounced it par-i-di-gum—”‘the femme lesbian is looking for a strong, masculine—but not manly—woman who can protect her against the perceived threat of straight society.' That's you!” Krystal sounded like a shopper who had just found the perfect accessory. “I bet that's why she came in here. She saw you through the window and she was like, ‘I've got to meet this woman.'” Krystal closed the book and examined the woman on the cover. “You're way cuter than this girl.”

It wasn't hard; the woman on the cover looked like a haggard truck driver from 1950.

“Aren't you supposed to be studying for the GED?” Tate asked.

“My dad taught me most of that stuff already, when I was, like, a little kid.”

“Then take the test and go to college,” Tate said.

“I don't need to, 'cause my dad and I are going to start a club, and I don't need a degree for that.”

“Right.”

“She was pretty,” Krystal said. “Like Hillary Clinton if Hillary Clinton was, like, a million years younger.”

Tate took the book from Krystal's hands and pretended to swat her with it.

“I am not ‘alpha butch.'”

Nonetheless, Tate did steal a glance at her face in the bathroom mirror before leaving the coffee shop. The woman's perfect good looks made her aware of her own dark eyebrows and her nose, which jutted out and then took a hook-like dive. She looked older than her thirty-five years. She looked tired after the long shift. And she did not feel alpha anything, even with her steel-toed Red Wings and her leather jacket. She did not even feel beta, or whatever letter came next in Krystal's alphabet.

Still, a spring spent rebuilding the network of railroad-tie stair steps in the Mount Tabor Community Garden had defined the muscles beneath her labrys tattoo. She was tanned from the work. Her head was freshly shaved. And it was summer, one of those perfect summer nights that Portlanders live for, so warm, so unambiguously beautiful it made up for ten months of steady rain.

When Tate sidled up to the bar at the Mirage, her friend Vita, the bartender, leaned over.

“She's here,” Vita said.

For a second, Tate thought of the woman.

“Who?” she asked.

Vita shot her a look that said,
Don't pretend not to know when you've asked me about her every day for six months.

Abigail. Tate could see her legs wrapped around the body of the cello, her hips splayed, her black concert skirt riding up, her orange hair falling over the cello's orange wood.

Vita plunked a shot in front of Tate.

“On the house. She's with someone.”

Tate knocked the shot back, nearly choking as her brain registered the taste a split second after it hit the back of her throat.

“What the hell was that?” She wiped her mouth.

“Frat Boy's Revenge. Jägermeister and grape vodka. I made one too many for the baby dykes in the corner.”

Tate grimaced and cleared her mouth with a swig of beer. Then she noticed something: that indefinable feeling of being watched. She turned. At a table by the door, the woman from Out Coffee sat, one hand resting on the base of a martini glass, as though she feared it might fly away. She caught Tate's eye for a second, smiled, and then looked away with a shake of her head. When she looked up again, Tate raised her beer with a slight smile.

“God, you have it so easy!” Vita said, punching Tate on the arm.

Tate turned back to the bar. “She's not interested in me. Look at her.”

“
You
look at her,” Vita said, raising both eyebrows.

In the mirror behind the bar, Tate saw the woman picking her way through the tables, hesitating, looking from side to side as though puzzling her way through a maze.

“She's cute. Don't blow it,” Vita said in a whisper the whole bar could hear.

“Hello.” The woman took the stool next to Tate's. She sat on the very edge, as though ready to flee.

Vita leaned in. She looked predatory. Her hair was teased into a rocker bouffant, and she had on more leopard print than Tate thought was appropriate work attire, even at a bar.

“Will you be buying this lady a drink?” Vita asked Tate.

“I'm fine,” the woman said. “I was just leaving.”

At that moment, Abigail appeared. Tate took in the sight: Abigail on the arm of Duke Bryce, drag king extraordinaire. Duke grinned, a big toothy grin, like an Elvis impersonator on steroids. Abigail clung to Duke's arm, a romance heroine hanging off the lesbian Fabio.

“Someone you know?” the woman asked.

“Knew.”

A moment later, Abigail released her lover and came over, an apologetic look on her face.

“I'm sorry. I didn't think I'd see you here. I mean, I was going to tell you about me and Duke, you know, earlier.”

Tate shrugged. The music had dropped a decibel, and a few of the other patrons turned to listen.

“I mean, I know you're still really upset about the breakup. About us. Really, I wasn't looking for anything. I just saw Duke one day and presto!” Abigail's giggle made it sound like she had suddenly been transported back to seventh grade. “I thought I wanted someone who understood my music.”

That had been the explanation when Abigail cheated on Tate with the oboist.

“But then I met Duke, and she's just so…brava.”

Duke was an alpha butch, Tate thought. She could take a picture and show Krystal.

“I just know it all happened for a reason, Tate.”

Tate was trying to think of a response to this when she was startled by a touch. The woman from the coffee shop had touched the back of her head. She ran her hand across Tate's cropped hair, then slid her fingertips down the back of Tate's neck. Then she withdrew her hand quickly.

“Who is she?” The woman's voice was much softer than it had been in the coffee shop, almost frightened.

Tate was still concentrating on the woman's touch, which seemed to linger on her skin. It had been six months since Abigail officially dumped her, but much longer since she had been touched like that. Abigail had never caressed her. Abigail seduced her cello, everyone in the orchestra agreed, but she had squeezed Tate. Tate had always come away from their lovemaking feeling rather like rising bread dough: kneaded and punched down.

Now Tate stumbled over her words. “This is…this is Abby. She's a cellist.”

The woman leaned closer to Tate, and Tate could smell a sweet perfume, like citrus blossoms, rising from her hair.

“What seat?” the woman asked Abigail.

This had been an important distinction that had always been lost on Tate.

“Third,” Abigail answered defensively.

“Oh. Only third.” The woman turned and, with a gesture even more fleeting than her fingers on Tate's neck, she pressed her lips to Tate's cheek.

Abigail mumbled something Tate did not catch and walked away, disappearing down the hallway that led from the bar to the dance floor. The woman straightened and crossed her legs.

“I'm sorry,” the woman said. She took a large sip of her drink. “I don't do things like that. I just don't like all those freckles.”

“Freckles?”

Tate had loved the beige-on-white-lace of Abigail's freckles. Plus, one couldn't hold someone's freckles against them. Or maybe, if one looked like this woman, one could.

“She reminds me of my sister.” The woman spoke quickly. “The freckles and that whole ‘I'm going to be nice to you, but I'm actually sticking the fork in' thing. ‘You can't tell me to piss off because that would make you look like a jerk, even though I'm the one who's ruined your life.' I know that routine.” The woman finished the rest of her martini in one sip.

Tate was still trying to figure out what to do with the feeling that suffused her body. The woman's touch, offered unexpectedly after months of abstinence and then just as quickly withdrawn, left her dizzy. She felt like she had just swallowed a bowl of warm moonlight. But she recovered her manners and held out her hand.

“My name is…”

The woman cut her off. “I don't want to know.”

Tate withdrew her hand, the moonlight cooling. But as soon as she withdrew her hand, the woman grabbed it, holding on as though she were going to shake hands but lingering much longer than any handshake.

“I didn't mean it like that,” she said.

She leaned forward, her perfect good looks furrowed by worry.

Behind the woman's head, Vita flicked her tongue between the V of her two raised fingers.

Tate widened her eyes, the only nonverbal cue she could flash Vita.
Embarrass me, and I will strangle you
, her eyes said. But she wasn't sure Vita was listening.